NetApp has recently announced the successful completion of the 12th cohort of its NetApp Excellerator program, with five deep tech startups graduating on the demo day.
The startups, NEMA AI, Zeron, Chaos Genius, Kensu, and Blockfenders, presented their data-driven deep tech solutions to investors, industry leaders, mentors, and NetApp executives.
These deep tech startups from Cohort 12 have focused on developing innovative solutions in data management, neuroscience, and AI-based consumer insights. They represent the increasing trend of facilitating data orchestration, optimization, and data security in modern businesses.
Around the years, Gen AI has solidified its position as a technology with the potential to automate tasks and foster product innovation.
In today’s business landscape, organizations, including startups, require secure and high-performance access to data stored in complex hybrid and multicloud environments. NetApp’s AI approach provides them with solutions that offer simplicity in data management, regardless of where the data is located said the official release.
“Through the cohorts we have seen an increase in the number of startups that are leveraging deep tech to offer data-centric and unique business solutions. The entrepreneurs exemplify the power of collaboration and perseverance in shaping the future of technology” said Ravi Chhabria, Managing Director at NetApp India. “This cohort also marks the graduation of 18 startups mentored under NetApp ExcellerateHER – an initiative that mentors startups with women founders to help them navigate specific challenges. Congratulations to all the participating startups, we applaud the innovative spirit and transformative ideas that have emerged.”
In alignment with this focus, deep tech startups like NEMA AI, Chaos Genius, and Zeron, co-founded by women, are crucial contributors to addressing contemporary challenges.
Ventures like NEMA AI have led to advancements in neuroscience and AI-based consumer insights, reshaping strategies across sectors like education, branding, and marketing.
Additionally, Chaos Genius stands at the forefront of data optimisation, serving as a pivotal tool for Snowflake users and empowering organisations with valuable insights for informed decision-making. Zeron, on the other hand, plays a pivotal role in cybersecurity, offering a single point of truth for informed decision-making.
Three out of five graduating women co-founded deep tech startups received mentorship through NetApp ExcellerateHER, an initiative of the NetApp Excellerator program aimed at supporting women-led startups.
Over the last seven years, NetApp has mentored a total of 77 startups, including 29 global startups and 18 women-led startups. In the past five years, eight startups have had successful exits.
Driven by a shared vision, the Excellerator ecosystem with NetApp’s mentors, leaders, startups, and investors, has spurred significant advancements in the realm of deep tech. The alumni startups have collectively raised over 360 million USD – a testament to the success of the program.
Launched in 2017, the NetApp Excellerator Program has garnered recognition as one of the top five accelerator programs in India for corporate innovation, by NexTT Awards.
The program features a proof-of-concept (PoC) model that enables entrepreneurs to showcase the efficacy of their solutions in real-world scenarios.
From Cohort 12, Chaos Genius, Kensu, and Blockfenders have completed PoCs with NetApp. Chaos Genius revolutionised NetApp’s approach to Snowflake expenses as their targeted advice, user-friendly design, and simple implementation boosted organisational efficiency. This led to a 28% decrease in expenditure, delivering a 20-fold return on investment and unmistakable operational efficiency benefits.
Kensu’s POC demonstrates its AI-powered real-time data observation platform’s effectiveness in addressing ActiveIQ Data Lake challenges. With 10,000 tables ingested in real time, Kensu swiftly identifies bad data, ensuring efficient management.
NetApp Excellerator Program Cohort 12 startups, at a glance:
| Startup | Brief | Website |
| NEMA AI | NEMA AI uses Neuroscience & AI for education, employability, marketing, decoding brain patterns for data-driven decisions. | https://nemaai.com/ |
| Chaos Genius | Chaos Genius is a DataOps Observability platform that helps companies optimize their data costs and workloads on Snowflake. | https://www.chaosgenius.io/ |
| Zeron | Zeron is a Cyber Risk Posture Management Platform which acts as the Single Point of Truth for Cybersecurity helping cybersecurity stakeholders make Informed Decisions. | https://zeron.one/ |
| Kensu | Kensu’s 360° Enterprise Data Observability solution allows data teams to reduce risks and costs related to data incidents, helping them scale up value creation from their data. | https://www.kensu.io/ |
| Blockfenders | Blockfenders is a Kubernetes based, cloud-agnostic zero engineering data collaboration platform that automates secure and compliant data delivery and sharing at scale, interactively across heterogeneous cloud and on-premise data sources. | https://www.blockfenders.com/ |